9 Jun
2002
9 Jun
'02
3:59 p.m.
William, I hope you don't take this personally but you don't have a clue about
what you're talking about!
At 08:33 PM 6/9/02 -0400, William wrote:
And a location with VERY lax environmental laws (NJ seems to be a favorite!) so that
they can dispose of the waste that they create when they extract the worthwhile
materials.
Let me just say that I am amazed at the amount of
misinformation in this
thread, here and elsewhere.
Better metals!?!?! You MUST be kidding! The
metal in 99% computers
is about one level above slag.
The metal quality in modern computers is just fine. The only thing that
really has changed is "lightweighting" - basically less material is used.
The steel shells might be thinner, the wires may be shorter, and the gold
plate may be a fraction of what is used to be. Once the metals are
extracted from the computers, none of it is so terrible that it is waste. Gold is gold.
Not when it's <2 microns thick and only <40% gold! Compare that to 25+
micron thickness and 85% gold used in HP and other high end equipment. The other materials
used in most modern computers are of a similar LOW quality but I won't debate that
now.
Mild steel (minus rust) is pretty much mild steel. Aluminum
alloy is still basically aluminum. Some of the metal is
basically horrible
- but that is reused for castings and still is worth saving. Nothing has
changed, other than the amount of computers a scrapper has to junk to turn
a profit. It is tougher today, so only the bigger scrapyards are surviving.
Folks, there seems to be this idea running computers are not recycled
that well, and all sorts of them go to the landfill. This is crap, plain
and simple. Computers have the distinction of being one of the most
recycled resources out there.
A good yard will extract 98 percent of the
goodies out of pallets of computer junk they get.
I guess that depends on what your idea of "extract" is. They might extract 98%
of the USEFULL (ie profitable) material but LARGE amount still go to landfills and a LOT
of other places were they can dump it without being caught. Hell, one of my best
scrounging locations is an illegal dump. Steve Robertson, Mike Haas and a couple of other
members of this list can verify that if you like. Not everything that goes there is
worhtless :-)
Basically, all that is
left is wire insulation (after shredding to get the
conductors),
epoxy-fibreglass (after the boards are shredded to get the copper,
solder, gold, etc.), and the glass from the tubes (tubes are falling to
flatpanels, so the problem will "correct itself"). Everything else,
plastics included, are now recycled.
That is probably a better record
than soda cans or newspapers.
Almost certainly but newspaper are hardly an environmental hazard. Hell, I don't
THINK Aluminium cans are either even if they do linger around for the next century.
Another point is that basically *all* corporate systems (from hoards of
PeeCees to mainframes) get recycled.
Ha, Ha, Ha, Roll on the floor laughing hysteriacally! Wipes tears from eyes.
You don't honestly believe that do you????? Big companies sell/give their
surplus to fly-by-night companies that PROMISE to recycle it but once they get it it's
another story. It's no different from when numerous toxic waste producers
"sold" their waste to third party companies for "proper disposal" that
usually meant finding the nearest empty field and dumping it or sometimes just opening the
valve and driving down the road till everything "leaked" out. Believe me, I
worked for one such company for a few weeks when they were short handed. They had a
contract to get ALL of the equipment from a LARGE U.S. electronics corporation whose name
I can't reveal. But lets just call them M, OK? As long as M was assured that the
company would ATTEMPT to recycle as much material as PRACTICLE (ie PROFITABLE) they were
happy. Of course by the time that M reported on their "recycling plan" to the
public, the public was assured that M was "recycling" 100% of their surplus and
scrap material. All "100% recycled" meant to them was that 100% was transferred
to someone else. In the end the whole thing collasped because there were too many back
door deals going on at M and nearly all of the usefull equipment disappeared before going
to the disposal company. They were left with nothing but unwanted computers, broken test
equipment, TONS of scrap plastic and circuit boards and the like, all of it nearly
worthless. We sold what we could, gave away piles more and dumped 99% of the computers
into not only our dumpster but also those of several surrounding businesses. I got a
number of HP computers from them but threw hundreds of others into the dumpsters.
Sure, they get tossed into a
dumpster, but that dumpster does not end up at the dump
- it goes to the
scrap yard.
Obviously you don't know anything about the scrap or trash businesses. Scrap
dealers collected usable items in THEIR OWN TRUCKS, 100%* of the stuff in the dumpsters
was picked up by the trash companies and went directly to the landfill.
*Unless a dumpster diver got to it first but that was seldom since nothing that had any
value was thrown away. We had dumpster divers but even they didn't want the stuff
that we threw out.
Likewise, *most* computers left on the streets (with the
exception of tubes) end up at the scrappers as well.
The garbage
collection companies will generally pull out computer scrap and send it
to the scrappers.
You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about dumps and the trash business.. (1) the drivers are
usually too ignorant to know what's worth anything and much too busy to have the time
to worry about it. (2) dumps don't put out anything, it ALL goes into the landfill. I
once asked some dump employees if they ever took any of the stuff home and they told that
they were NOT allowed to and that they had been warned that they WOULD be fired
IMMEDIATELY if they were ever caught taking ANYTHING from the trash. (3) The
dumps/landfills and their employees have NO connection with the scrappers. They don't
even know who they are or that they even exist. I know because I questioned them when I
was trying to find scrap places.
It saves them money, even if they get nothing for it
from the junkman, as it cuts doen on their dumping
charges.,
Wrong again. It could potenially save them money of dump fees but it would cost them a
lot more for the manpower, space and equipment needed to soft the stuff. In addition, the
dump trucks have compactors built into them so that they can crush and compact the trash
as they collect it so that they can carry more in the truck. Go outside and watch one
sometime. If they intended to sort the stuff they won't be able to compact it would
they?
Modern PeeCees have anywhere from 2 to 13 dollars worth of scrap metals,
each. Mostly gold and tantalum.
TANTALUM? Show me some Tantalum in a modern PC! HIGH grade gold fingers (edge
connctors) from circuit boards USED to be worth about 1 cent per contact. But the PC
quality fingers are of a lot lower quality (and value) and in addition gold has dropped
2/3 in value in the last couple of years. NONE of the places that I've been to in the
last year or two even bother to cut them off and save them any more.
I realize that some edge connectors have gold and
there is
copper on the circuit boards but the amounts are miniscule and certainly
not worth the labor and chemicals to extract it.
It is worth it, but it has to be done in large quantities. An investment
in special machines (in the 120,000 dollar category) is needed to get the
extraction to a reasonable cost.
Anyway, this whole China ban thing will basically change nothing. It is
basically a way for them to keep the worthless tubes out of their scrap
system. China needs scrap. Even the cheapest consumer garbage is made out
of the stuff. They will continue to buy it in the future - just now we
can't load up the containers with tubes.
You may be right up to a point. But OTOH we aren't likely to pay the cost of
disassembling the stuff and removing the tubes and then disposing of them as hazardous
waste and still GIVE the stuff to China are we? So will sending the other remains to China
be economicly feasable? Probably not.
Furthermore, the tubes aren't the only hazardous material in the e-scrap. Go back
and read the article that started this thread. Burning wire and plastic to recover the
metals creates toxic fumes, the heavy metals such as cadnium, nickel and lead pollute the
land and water, manually breaking the glass and plastic is a hazard to the workers and
I'm sure that there are other problems that we haven't even thought of so it looks
to me like the days of dumping the stuff in China or other third world countries are over
with.
Joe